Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Qualified v. Quantified

Today a random grad student stopped by my office to ask what he described as a random question. He said he was going around asking various people a particular question, and even though my research is "not quantitative" and I "probably never use equations", since my door was open, he thought he'd ask me his question anyway. He was asking people which equation editor they use.

I am "not quantitative"? Those are fighting words in some fields..

I did not challenge the student to a duel or shove my equation-filled reprints in his face; I just answered his question, simply telling him which equation editor I use. He was surprised that I use equation editors and have opinions about them, but he didn't comment further.

Not all of my papers have equations, but some do, including a few very recent ones. Since this student has clearly not read my papers, I wonder what about me screams "not quantitative" to him. Of course I have a hypothesis, but then, I just happen to be wearing my gender lenses today.

To many, being quantitative shows that you are a serious, rigorous scientist. I was discussing this with one of my students recently in relation to the main goals of his research. He said that a main goal was to quantify things. I said "Why?" and he seemed surprised, as if quantifying things was an end in itself. This turned into a wide-ranging and interesting conversation about his research and future directions for his work, including discussion of where quantifying things fits into the general scheme of his work.

Another frequent quantitative topic is something I call my you can always get a number speech. This speech has several parts: (1) You can always get a number.. but does it mean anything? and (2) You can always get a number, but even if it means something.. what does it mean? (i.e., the number itself is not an end in itself, you have to think about it).

It is surely a sign of age that I have these little speeches that I find myself giving over and over. There is probably an equation I could write (if I ever did such things) that relates my age in any given year to the frequency with which I give these speeches. Or something.

josh - Not a goat! That is the absolute wrong thing to sacrifice if you want to use LaTeX. If you sacrificed a goat, your only option now is to find numbers and Greek symbols in newspapers, cut them out carefully with scissors, and paste them with a gluestick into a hard copy of your paper, then scan the pages. Alas.

Being a mathematician, I commonly joke with people that I don't "do" numbers. (Granted, I usually mention this when they want me to calculate the tip at a restaurant.) The assumptions people make are always interesting. I must admit it's difficult for me to imagine doing hard science without some kind of quantitative information.

Being a mathematician, the default excuse whenever I actually do calculate something incorrectly is, naturally, "Oh, I don't do arithmetic anyway, so..."

And it's gotten to the point where my friends preemptively excuse me from numerical tasks. ;)

As for typesetting in general (and not only because it makes the maths all Shiny!), I have been using LaTeX since second year high school (second to last year of Gymnasium for those who actually speak European ;) - and had my English teacher ask me, with awe in her voice, what ever I did do to my essays to make them look So Damn Good.

Schlupp - I love that quantitative can be used as a put-down. In my field they say 'that's just descriptive'. Yeeearrgh. Kiss of death. And instead of 'transformative' they say 'revolutionary.'

My latest pet peeve is people who think graphs are not just more powerful, but also more valid than the primary data they're based on. I mean graphs are only as good as the data, and graphs can be faked a lot more easily!

I like the Einstein quote the best: "Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."

I also like LaTeX but thus far have never needed to worry about typesetting equations badly enough to debate whether another tool would be better.

Hmmm, I do wonder what about you might seem non-quantitative. Maybe....women can't be quantitative? I (being female) was pondering that as I got reviews back on a paper where a lazy-ass cranky reviewer dinged us for not providing quantitation for a number of images we showed (in each and every case quantitation was shown in the next panel of the same figure. Huh? Not even sure how to respond to this sort of comment without my head exploding. You showed saintly restraint with the random student, IMO.

badbug, if there is still a chance the paper might be accepted, you have to be polite, so:- Leave everything as it is.- Write to the ref. that you have 'improved the captions in order clarify the issue.'

About Me

I am a full professor in a physical sciences field at a large research university. I am married and have a teenaged daughter.
I have the greatest job in the world, but this will not stop me from noting some of the more puzzling and stressful aspects of my career as a science professor.
E-mail (can't promise to reply): femalescienceprofessor@gmail.com